Best Weight Loss Supplements for Men

These Are The Best Weight Loss Supplements For Men

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A weight loss supplement, or fat-burner, sounds like a great idea. Pop a few pills before a workout and you’ll turbo charge your metabolism, rev-up the fat-burning fires within and you’ll be melting fat from your abs like wax on a candle…or so they say.

The problem is that fat-burners, like most supplements available to us fitness enthusiasts, don’t work. This isn’t me being a grumpy sceptic, the evidence shows it.

Take green tea for example. It’s rich in antioxidants called catechins. One of those catechins is called epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG for short and it’s often claimed to boost metabolism. However, if you look at studies examining the fat-burning effect on green tea you’ll find it doesn’t make any significant difference.

In 2012, a meta-analysis (this is a large-scale review of existing research) examined 18 studies on the effect of green tea on weight loss involving 1,945 participants. The conclusion: “Green tea had no significant effect on the maintenance of weight loss.”

L-Carnitine is another popular weight loss supplement but it too is fairly useless. It may be effective for elderly folks: one study found a decrease in fat mass in Centenarian – yes, that’s people over the age of 100 – found it increased fat loss. But the same results aren’t found in athletic populations.

The list keeps going. Conjugated Linoleic Acid, or CLA for short, is a popular one but guess what? If you’re a human being, which most of our readers tend to be, it’s not going to be a game changer. It can increase fat burning by 60-80% in mice but in human trials where subjects consumed 3.4-g of CLA supplementation per day, for a year, it didn’t make any difference at all.

Want another one? Go on then. Raspberry ketones! Adverts for these often jump up on Facebook promising the body fat of a Spartan in just 30 days, but once again there is no evidence that they help to make leaner humans. There are a few studies done in rats but the equivalent dose for humans is ridiculous.

So ‘fat-burners’ may not be a good way to spend your cash. But that doesn't mean there aren't supplements out there that can help, and do have the science to support their use. Especially if your weight loss regime involves a lot of exercise, there are powders and potions out there that can support your training, increasing your strength, building your muscles and improving your immunity in the face of a heavier training schedule. Here are our top picks.

Creatine

Creatine is one of the most researched supplements on the market. There are over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies on creatine and nine times out of 10 the users experienced a positive effect on performance. And if you're lifting heavy weights or taking on rounds of HIIT to burn fat and build lean muscle, listen up.

Industry authorities like TheInternational Society of Sports Nutrition state intheir position standthat creatine isthe most effective nutritional supplement currently available for increasing high-intensity exercise capacity (itself an effective way of shedding calories). This is also good news if you’re trying to get stronger, build muscle or increase your power output.

A meta-analysis in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research reviewed 22 studies on creatine and weightlifting performance and found creatine increased strength by 8% and power output by 14%. Another study reviewed 100 papers on creatine and showed that it was proven to increase lean body mass.

What’s the best kind to take? The most researched form of creatine is creatine monohydrate and the effective dose seems to be 3-5g per day. There are also newer forms hitting the market like creatine hydrochloride, which has been shown to be less effective than creatine monohydrate; or creatine nitrate, a form of creatine in which no studies, beyond testing solubility, have been conducted.

Omega 3

Omega-3 supplements, or ‘fish oils’ as some folks call them, are a pretty good choice if you want to improve heart health and support recovery too. Especially handy if you're putting your body through five gym sessions a week to shed the pounds. The two types of omega 3 are eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). When picking a fish oil supplement it’s important to make sure it contains the right amount of both EPA and DHA as some cheaper supplements are very low on both.

Some Omega-3 supplements, such as unrefined or fermented cod liver oil, are also very high in vitamin A. As a result, to reduce the minor risk of vitamin A toxicity, it’s a safe bet to stick to refined/purified fish oil supplements – they usually cost a little more but it’s worth it.

If you don’t eat a lot of oily fish at the moment (salmon, trout, mackerel etc.) then the recommended dose of Omega-3 is around 1g per day. However, some folks have said that you don’t necessarily need to increase your Omega-3 intake to see health benefits, rather that we should reduce our Omega-6 intake which is often found in vegetable oils and foods like biscuits and cakes.

Beta-Alanine

If you want to increase muscular endurance (making sure you last a full gym session) and reduce the burning feeling from lactic acid build-up when you’re lifting weights then several studies show that beta-alanine can help. Researchers have found that around dose around 4g per day is effective.

If you’ve tried beta-alanine before it’s likely that you will have experienced paresthesia (a harmless tingling of the skin like pins and needles). This may be one reason why beta-alanine is often included in popular pre-workout blends as this physical tingling makes users ‘feel’ the pre-workout having an effect. The reality is that the tingling has no physiological benefit and it doesn’t matter what time of day you take beta-alanine in order to experience training improvements.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t been shown to increase fat-burning or weight loss and it doesn’t seem to have much of a muscle building benefit or strength inducing effect either. However, it is still early days and more and more studies are being conducted on Vitamin D and it is likely that this position stance may change as new research is published.

We should be able to get enough Vitamin D from sun exposure during the summer months so supplements aren't generally needed when the days are long. So it may be an idea to include supplemental Vit D in your diet from October – March.

If you’re looking for a boost pre-workout or if you’re a runner or rugby player then caffeine has been shown to improve the quality of training by minimising feelings of fatigue and helping you push harder without tiring as quickly.

How much should you take? The International Olympic Committee (IOC) suggest a small dose of around 2-3 mg/kg body weight, which is usually around 100-200mg taken 30-60 minutes before exercise.

Caffeine is highly stimulatory so it’s not recommended for anyone who already consumes a lot of caffeine (sorry coffee drinkers), people with high blood pressure or heart issues and it can obviously impact that quality of your sleep if taken too close to bed.

Multivitamins

Not exactly the most exciting of supplements, but the good old multivitamin is still great supplement or ‘insurance’ for folks who have a poorer diet or are fussy eaters and don’t eat much fruit and veg. It's also a good back-up if your weight loss diet misses one or two things out!

Scott Baptie is an Aberdeen-based sports nutritionist and online personal trainer. He helps people move, look, feel and perform better via FoodForFitness.co.uk. He dislikes pseudoscience, lumpy protein shakes and people who swear in public.

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